Why Democracy Fails Us

Apathy is not enough of a reason.
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Kirby Goidel in America’s Failing Experiment (How We the People Have Become the Problem) argues that democracy failed us because the general pubic has been anesthetized to what our government is doing. But a patient in surgery is also also anesthetized and has very little knowledge of what their doctor is doing yet most times they are not butchered.

First some quotes from Goidel’s Introduction that make his point and then my take:

Our politicians are, by and large, doing what we have asked them to do. “We the people” are simply not up to the task of sef-governance; we are easily misled and controlled by corporate power and interest group campaigns. In truth, we never have been up to the task, but, for a variety of reasons, our faiings are more evident, more troublesons, and more dangerous in contemporary politics. (page 3)

We get the government we deserve so we are governed poorly. Or rather, we are governed by private interests rather than the public good – ironically, not because government does not listen to us but because it listens to us too closely and what we have to say is contradictory, uninformed, and nonsensical. Organized political interests step into the void. (page 7)

States and municipalities across the country have proved fiscally irresponsible; they are unable (or unwilling) to address unfunded liabilities in their retirement systems, and unable (or unwilling) to pay for critical government services, and there is a race to the bottom in terms of the provision of government services and the reduction of taxes. (page 9)

The system can be hacked because it lacks the firewall of an informed citizenry assumed by democratic and participatory theorists (pages 9 – 10)

There is a lot of truth there but the reason democracy has failed us is that our government has been taken away from us by either campaign donors or public employees working the system. The two clips at the top of this blog refer to:

No resolution on the agenda but several Roselle residents came out tonight against the Mind & Body Complex. By order of appearance or, as you will see in the second video, disappearance: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .